The problem has been always the temporal scales. But if you change that, the odds are not so bad. If all the civilizations started more or less at the same tim

The problem has been always the temporal scales. But if you change that, the odds are not so bad. If all the civilizations started more or less at the same time that us, it's not so weird that we have not found anybody else. If you add some other factor (maybe civilizations are only possible far from the center, so there is a big spread between them) the probabilities improve. It also would mean interesting times ahead for humanity. Of course, all this is only idle speculation.